I should be a politician with my awesome skills of keeping promises, maybe the mayor of food. So back in one of my first posts I wrote about the bomb diggity sandwich found at Vietnamese joints, and now I am returning to titillate your senses with my other favorite meal bún.
I tried to make an honest effort of going to a different restaurant than the one that I visited in that previous post, if nothing else to get away from the stellar background music, but it was not in the cards. I left work and headed north up Fry Road to visit Phở 88 located just north of Morton Road, but evidently they are closed on Mondays so I was dejected and forced to scramble. Alas, I ended up back at Phở Mai on Westgreen at I-10.
I did however spice it up this time and roll with a completely new dish that had nothing in common with the sandwich minus a healthy portion of pork.
First, a little background information on bún thịt nướng giò, from hence forth it shall be known as #65 since that is what it is on the menu and I am a lazy writer so deal with it. The name is basically a description of what is in the dish, bún being the term for the vermicelli rice noodles, thịt referring to the pork, nướng means it comes with fish sauce, and giò means it has an egg roll. Now that does not include all of the other fresh veggies piled in the bowl but you will just have to wait until later to see those.
As I mentioned before fish sauce is one of the greatest condiments ever invented, this fermented sauce derived from fish kicks everything up a notch or two. It is basically a salty sauce similar to Worcestershire sauce that isn’t quite so pungent.
The other rock star condiment that I had to use on this dish (as well as most other dishes when it is an option) was the famous Sriracha or as I commonly hear it referred to, “the rooster sauce”. This chili hot sauce is awesome, and it belongs on most Asian dishes, if not many other cuisines that can use a kick in the pants.
The bowl that shows up is quite frankly gigantic, and as you can see filled to the brim. The flavor components on the surface are obvious, chopped pork, egg roll, along with piles of green onions, peanuts, carrots, and a sprig of cilantro. Basically, this bowl is a colorful party begging you to shovel it into your mouth. The Vietnamese egg roll is a different creature than the Chinese egg rolls that many of you are used to, it has a meat mix with some pork and prawns, along with your usual leafy veggie filling, but the twist in it is mushrooms, giving it a much darker filling than you usually find in other cuisines. For those of you who hate mushrooms do not wince and vomit on me, it is not an overpowering flavor and just blends nicely with the rest of the mix.
Upon receiving the bowl one of my first tasks is to get my mix on, doing this brings up the veggies hiding on the bottom of the bowl, and mixes the rest in the fish sauce that has settled in on the bottom. Doing this mix causes the lettuce and sprouts at the bottom to get more evenly spread out throughout the dish.
This dish is a large serving, but you don’t lose a single piece of flavor to size, and at under $7 it is a good price for a full on flavor bên (according to Google translate that means party but I am too lazy to research more beyond that).
Enjoy.
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